Book Quotes
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It's a tract against capital punishment in the genre of Swift's Modest Proposal. I was simply following a formula to its logical conclusion. Some people appear to have understood it. The publication of Naked Lunch in England practically coincided with their abolition of capital punishment. The book obviously had a certain effect.
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I feel much more comfortable in politics than I did in book writing. Book writing is so hard. Politics felt easy compared to that.
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My favorite kind of book is a domestic drama that's grounded in reality yet slightly unhinged.
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They have this big book called the 'DSM-IV,' you know, that is supposedly written about crazy people, but I think it is a book that is written by crazy people!
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You come home to find your 17-year-old daughter engrossed in a book. Which would delight you more - if it were 'Twilight' or 'Middlemarch?'
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People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.
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I guess my most prized pop culture possession is a signed first edition of the book 'Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk.
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I don't do things by the book.
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The rules that have been imposed, the rules that are already on the books haven't been effective. If you look at the places where the strictest gun control measures, whether it be California, Los Angeles, Barack Obama's home state in Chicago, they're a disaster, and they have the greatest rules in the world.
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When I adapt a novel, I don’t really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.
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I think because I try to keep things as real as I can, or I try to start from a place of reality, I almost don't have the imagination to write a book that's not set where I am.
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During the first five years that I was writing the series, I made plans and wrote small pieces of all the books. I concentrate on one book at a time, though occasionally I will get an idea for a future book and scribble it down for future reference.
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When I think about the books I've written, it probably takes 150,000-200,000 words to get a 50,000 page book. Highlighting something and hitting Cmd-X is second nature.
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I didn't write with a target audience in mind. What excited me was how much I would enjoy writing about Harry. I never thought about writing for children - children's books chose me. I think if it is a good book anyone will read it.
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You just have to sit down and write the next book. I mean, it's not all uncommon for a writer to get a ton of publicity for one book and then not get as much for the next one. I don't worry about that because I try to worry about the one single part of the job I can control: the writing of the book.
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Rereading, we find a new book.
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I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book.
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All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you.
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I think the bravest thing to write about is nothing, just to write a book in which nothing happens.
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Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to your readers one piece at a time, thus allowing them the chance to put the jigsaw puzzle together by the end of the book.
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For myself, I haven't been content to carry on producing books that merely strain against the conventions - as I've grown older, and realised that there aren't that many books left for me to write, so I've become determined that they should be the fictive equivalent of ripping the damn corset off altogether and chucking it on the fire.
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Why sleep when there are books to read.
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'Cemetery Lake' was an interesting book to write.
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Careless of books, yet having felt the power Of Nature, by the gentle agency Of natural objects, led me on to feel For passions that were not my own, and think (At random and imperfectly indeed) On man, the heart of man, and human life.
